You Like Your Girls Insane
by Nightshade2412
Summary: Alex is abducted by a woman with a grudge, and K-Unit are sent on a mission to rescue him. For SpyFest 2019 July Fic Exchange.


**A.N. For the SpyFest Fic Exchange, the prompt being: **

"**I have a strange fondness for Alex & K-Unit doing stuff together, and an even stranger fondness for the following: missions, mysteries (murder or mundane), and HEISTS (museum, bank, etc etc etc). if you could give me one or more of these ft. the k-unit + cub, I'd be completely delighted.**

**Further bonuses (aka don't feel obliged to include these but if one strikes your fancy PLEASE TAKE IT): team as family/found family, carefully crafted plans having to be thrown out of the window at the last second, Cool Gadgets, hurt/comfort is cool, i'm weirdly attached to Snake for a character who literally had one line in the entire series."**

**Whoever gave me this prompt, thank you, I had a lot of fun with this! I hope it lives up to what you wanted. **

**Disclaimer: Just assume I own nothing. Title from "Born to Die" by Lana Del Rey.**

* * *

Snake looked down at the sheet in front of him and studied the information carefully before he spoke.

"The victim was found murdered in the kitchen, by Professor Plum, who shot him with a revolver."

Wolf sighed and showed him the revolver card.

"My turn," he said. "I'm gonna stay where I am. Miss Scarlett, rope, conservatory."

A sharp knock on the cabin door interrupted before he got an answer and the soldiers leapt to their feet, Eagle's foot sending one of the pieces flying. They snapped to attention as Sergeant Khan entered and exchanged wary glances when they were put at ease; usually, they were the ones summoned to him.

The sergeant surveyed the board game spread out over the floor. His lips twisted in amusement and the soldiers fought down their blushes.

"I'm glad to see you enjoy murder mysteries, gentlemen, because for your next assignment, your target is certainly a mystery and possibly a murderer. Come up to my office at once."

"Yes, sir," Wolf said on behalf of his unit.

The sergeant left and they scrambled to pull on their boots and berets and get out the door.

"What do you think this is about?" Snake asked as the three of them jogged towards the central hut. "Must be urgent if it couldn't wait until morning."

"Doesn't sound like a routine mission," Wolf agreed. "Then again, I don't think there is such a thing."

"And why us?" Eagle added. "Not that I'm complaining, but we only just got back from Afghanistan and they wanted us to train with a new unit member before deploying us again."

"We'll find out when we get there," Wolf said. "Less talking, more running."

* * *

"Alex Rider." The woman drew out each syllable, savouring the sounds on her tongue. "We meet at last. It's funny; I feel like I know everything about you already. As if we've been friends for _years._"

"Very funny," Alex agreed, deadpan. "I feel like I know nothing about you, as if you're a creepy stalker who decided to abduct me."

"Come, now, let's not get off on the wrong foot! Not when we still have so much to discuss."

Alex rolled his eyes. "Whatever. I hear a lot of these supervillain monologues, so maybe we can cut this down to the 'Just a Minute' version. No repetition, hesitation or deviation. You have sixty seconds to talk about 'my plan to destroy the world', starting now."

"My plan to destroy the world? Oh, no, Alex. I plan to destroy _you._"

She paused for dramatic effect.

"_Bzzt,_" Alex said. "Hesitation. But I don't actually have an evil plan myself, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on this one. You still have fifty-three seconds on the clock, take it away."

"You were threatened with exposure once before, by the journalist Harry Bulman. He was driven by his greed, to sell your story to the world and make a fortune for himself. Obviously, it would have ruined your life. But at least he was going to make you out to be a hero. Now, I know your whole story, I have access to newspapers on a much wider scale than poor Mr Bulman, and MI6 won't be able to pull any of their little tricks on me."

"_Bzzt_," Alex interrupted again. "Repetition of story. And Bulman. That's a correct challenge to me, so I'm going to take over for a bit. Firstly, I'm pretty sure everyone with plans to destroy the world already knows about me, and I'm getting fed up with MI6 still thinking they can use me without me getting caught ten seconds in, so you'd really be doing me a favour."

"You're bluffing."

"And _you're _butting in. What's your challenge."

She blinked. "Er- deviation?"

"It's totally not, but whatever. Eighteen seconds remaining, get on with it."  
"I'm not going to play nice, Alex. I'm not going to leave out the really sordid details. Everyone will know about Damian Cray and Julius Grief and all the others you killed. I wonder, hearing everyone call you a murderer, how long will it take until you start to believe it yourself?"

"Aaand time's up!" Alex said hastily, curling his nails into his palm as he forced a grin. "Speaking as the whistle went, it's- wait, what's your name again?"

* * *

"Her name is Agnes Swinton. She's a recluse, an author of a few cult classics that were considered distasteful by the mainstream but enjoyed a brief period of popularity nonetheless for being as scandalous as _Fifty Shades of Grey. _Not on account of the kinky erotica - although such books certainly aren't lacking from her resume - but because of her disturbing amount of sympathy for her villains."

"Nothing wrong with well-rounded characters," Snake murmured, examining the file in front of him.

Sergeant Khan glared. "_You _try reading one of her novels, and then tell me she doesn't need a stay in a secure psychiatric hospital, soldier."

His violent shudder was enough to make Snake back down quickly with a "Yessir."

"I was impressed by the way you handled Point Blanc, Wolf. Hostage situations can easily turn messy, but you got all the kids out alive and with minimal casualties. Not perfect, but I'm trusting you won't let me down on this mission."

"No, sir." Wolf was as professional as always, but his teammates had known him long enough to see his ears redden with pride.

"This isn't the first time Swinton has come under suspicion, but she's highly elusive and has learnt how to cover her tracks. Now, however, she's blatantly abducted a fifteen year old kid from London and taken him to her Welsh estate."

Wolf flicked through his bundle to land on a picture of the teenager. "No way," he breathed. "Cub?"

"What was that?" the sergeant asked, but he was ignored as the others crowded around Wolf to stare at the photo. Eagle snatched it out of his hands.

"Little Double-0-Nothing? What the _hell?_"

"You know the kid?" Khan said. He wasn't the same drill sergeant they'd had for selection.

"Yes, sir," Wolf answered. "Rider trained with our unit for two weeks, under the codename Cub."

"_Trained _with you? What for?"

"He was… It's all highly classified, sir."

"I need to know what we're working with, Corporal."

"He worked for MI6, sir," Wolf said reluctantly.

"You're sure about this?" Khan asked in disbelief.

"I met him again later, on a mission. Point Blanc."

"So _that's _the kid," Sergeant Khan mused. "It makes sense, and so far MI6 haven't been involved with this case so it's understandable that this was missed. But l'm not happy that I'm only hearing this now."

"What do you need us to do?" Wolf asked. A grim determination had settled over K-Unit.

"Swinton hired several mercenaries as guards for the estate a few days before the abduction, heavily armed by the looks of it. Whatever her plan is, she doesn't want to be interrupted until it's been carried out. And the boundary has a pretty impenetrable wall. That's why they decided to skip police raids and come straight to the SAS. Because we're supposed to be the best, soldiers, and there's a kid's life at stake here - and God knows what else. Is that understood?"  
"Yessir," they chorussed.

"Your top priority is getting the boy out. There's no time to waste - you'll be flying over and parachuting in immediately. Read the files for the details. Dismissed."

"Wait," Eagle said quickly, "What did you mean earlier? The 'possibly a murderer' thing?"

Sergeant Khan gave him a grim smile. "Like I said, she's very elusive. But still a suspect, on a number of unsolved cases. Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but…" His shrug conveyed everything he couldn't say, and Eagle felt a shiver go down his spine.

* * *

Once Agnes was sufficiently frustrated by Alex's refusal to show any outward signs of panic, he was taken downstairs to be locked in the basement, and when he was alone he allowed himself a minute to hyperventilate in a way that would have left her immensely satisfied were she there to see it. Then he dragged his fear back to a nail-chewing level, and set to examining his surroundings.

The basement, it turned out, was actually a wine cellar, the sort of thing he'd never expected to see in his life but wasn't surprised to find here; those with supervillain ambitions, he'd learned long ago, were fond of their eccentricities. There were rows upon rows of dusty bottles, probably all old and expensive for reasons he didn't understand, but all he cared about was whether he could use them to get out of here.

There was only one way out, no windows and thick walls the result of being underground, so he focused his attention on the door. It was made of thick wood, the lock and hinges stainless steel, and when he gave it a couple of trial kicks he got nothing to show for it except an aching leg and, on hearing the displeased shout on the other side, the knowledge that at least one guard had remained with him.

So that just left the lock as a potential weak spot. It too showed no signs of rusting, and Alex had nothing on him which he could use to pick it. He couldn't call anyone as his phone had been taken from him - even if he could get signal here, which he doubted, because he wasn't just in a basement, he was in a basement in _Wales._

But Alex had Smithers on his side, and Smithers never went for escape methods like picking locks and calling for help which were so cliché that they were easily prevented. He preferred getaways that were either flashy or clever, and preferably both.

Smiling, Alex dug about in the breast pocket of his flannel - the pocket no one ever used, and that the mercenaries had completely skipped over when they searched him, since they didn't have Scorpia's attention to detail; and anyway he hadn't been on a mission when they grabbed him, so they weren't expecting Smithers to have kept him supplied "in case of emergency" - and pulled out a single penny.

It looked innocent enough on the outside, tarnished so it wouldn't attract attention and of the exact same size, weight and appearance as any other. No shopkeeper would detect the forgery, although Smithers had probably chosen the lowest value of coin partly so agents wouldn't accidentally spend it. But when Alex scraped away the coating from the edge and pried off the side with the queen's head, it revealed an updated version of the metal-corroding cream, a protective coating between it and the copper of the coin, only a tiny bit there but hopefully just enough to eat through the lock.

The trouble would be keeping it in place - the cream might not hurt skin on its own, but the reaction could give off a serious amount of heat. Maybe Alex would suggest corrosive stickers next time he saw Smither, but for now, he had to improvise.

He grabbed a bottle of wine from the nearest shelf and yanked out the cork, using the rim to trap the coin against the lock. It took a moment to get everything in place, but then it started to fizz in a miniature firework display of orange and green sparks, and Alex finally realised that when Smithers had said _Here's a pretty penny _while tossing him the coin, it hadn't just been a turn of phrase.

"Good old Smithers," he whispered as he swung the door open and used the bottle to knock the guard out, stepping over him and tiptoeing up the stairs.

* * *

The helicopter blades whirred overhead as they approached the drop-off point, and Wolf's heart started to beat faster in his head. He fiddled with the straps of his parachute and counted his breaths, and tried to quiet the voices in his head.

"You good?" Snake asked quietly. Wolf had never told his teammates about his fear of heights, especially since after Cub had kicked his ass out of the plane that first time he'd managed to force himself through it the next, but as they grew closer as a unit they had learnt each other's tells. Snake and Eagle had seen the way his face grew pale and his hands shook whenever he had to jump but knew he never cowered while under fire, and they'd put two and two together.

"It's Cub," he answered simply. "I have to be."

Snake squeezed his shoulder briefly, and then he stepped away and took one last inhale, filling his lungs deep, before he threw himself out and let the wind whistle past him for a few terrifying seconds of freefall.

Once the static-line parachute deployed and he was descending at a rate slow enough to think, he had just enough time to remember where his weapons were before touching down and immediately unstrapping the harness, lifting his gun and preparing to cover Snake and Eagle as they landed if necessary. They were protected by the darkness, their chutes coloured for stealth and the night weighing down on the guards' eyelids, but there was no position so dangerous as dangling midair with hands too preoccupied to wield a weapon.

But the mercenaries were inexperienced, tired and complacent, and apparently K-Unit had more luck than Wolf would've assumed possible, because they all made perfect, silent landings, and the few guards still patrolling kept their gazes turned outwards, to the other side of the boundary walls.

They couldn't stay undetected much longer, their violent break-in into the house obvious but sudden enough to give them the element of surprise. It was enough to let them check half the ground floor rooms uninterrupted, but then they were met with a burst of machine gun fire, Wolf jerking back out of sight as the wooden floor in front of him was torn up in a hail of splinters. He communicated seamlessly with the rest of his unit to return fire and take the mercenary out - the first casualty of the night - but not for the first time he felt the vulnerability of being a three-man unit, of not having Fox there to make sure all sides were covered.

"Hopefully they don't all have weapons like that," Wolf muttered, tugging a sliver of wood from his arm.

They proceeded with more caution after that, each room of the enormous house they checked that turned out empty a source of both relief and growing concern. The sooner they found Cub and got out, the better.

In the end, he found them.

"What are you lot doing here?" Alex hissed when they stopped pointing their guns at him.

"Rescuing you, obviously," Wolf answered.

"Typical," he sighed. "The one time I don't _want _or _need _back-up is the one time it actually arrives. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm managing just fine on my own."

"Whatever, Cub, now let's go, chop-chop, the helicopter's waiting," Wolf said, already turning away.

Alex stayed where he was.

"Oh for the love of- What _now_?" Wolf groaned.

"Agnes Swinton wants to release my story to the world. I can't let that happen," Alex said.

"Yeah, and _we_ can't let you die."

"If I don't stop her, you might as well just kill me yourselves."

Wolf caught the undercurrent of steel in his voice and gave a stiff nod, but this wasn't a decision for him alone. "Guys?"

"I don't know much of your story," Snake said. "Would it really be that bad?"

"Worse," Alex said firmly. "And no, this isn't just teenage dramatics."

"Then we'll help you, but on your own head be it."

"Let's kick this punk's ass!" Eagle agreed, and the others rolled their eyes at him, but it lifted their mood as they followed Alex upstairs.

* * *

He led them up to Swinton's study on the first floor, the same room they'd been in when she told him of her plans to ruin his life, hanging back as they took out another guard on the way. Once there, he headed straight for the desk, firing up her computer as Eagle and Wolf stood guard and Snake helped rifle through the papers scattered about.

"Anytime now, Cub." Wolf threw an impatient look over his shoulder as Alex frantically tried different password combinations.

"We need to find Swinton," Alex said.

"What? No. We can come back for her later, once you're safe."

"It'll be too late then. I can't get into her files, and she could have sent everything through by the time she's arrested. And for all I know she could have copies. It's not like she gave me a lot of details."  
"Aren't you supposed to be good at hacking into stuff? Working for Six and all that?"

"I don't work for them," Alex muttered. "And I'm more of a James Bond than a Q."

Wolf snorted. "Sure you are."

"Smithers makes a pretty good Q, though," Alex mused. "Shame he's not here. Although…" He started yanking at plugs and cable to free the PC. "If we can't bring him to the computer, we can always bring the computer to him."  
"Seriously?" Alex showed no signs of letting up, so Wolf sighed. "Fine, you win. Let's go find Swinton."

Alex grinned, even as he hefted up the monitor. Snake shoved the papers he'd found into an empty folder and shoved it on Alex as well so he would have his hands free for his weapon. Then they slipped back into formation and headed down the hall.

She was leaning against the doorframe to her bedroom when they found her, her nightgown long, pale and lacy like something out of a gothic novel. She waved her guard away as they approached, her smile seductive, but with a manic, predatory gleam in her eyes that brought back to mind the rumours of _possibly a murderer _and made the adrenaline surge up in Wolf.

The base instinct in him, faced with that look, wanted to turn around and run. The person that Wolf had carefully molded himself into grinned back and advanced to meet her.

"Swinton," he growled, and her smile became a little more forced. "You're going to give up everything you have that contains information on Alex Rider."

"Nice try, but I think not."

He lifted the muzzle of his gun higher, the threat clear. "Don't make us do this the hard way."

"You're bluffing," she said mildly. "This wasn't part of your mission. You don't have the authorisation to do anything _the hard way._ You do know that torture is illegal, don't you?"  
"This is Cub we're talking about." He pressed closer until the tip of his gun rested on her chest. "What makes you think I care?"

She swallowed, but otherwise kept her composure, and Alex thought that alone made her terrifying, because he'd met a lot of intimidating people but Wolf was right up there with the best of them in this moment, and he'd have been cowering were he in her place.

"It's not going to happen," she told him, and she had dropped her act in favour of a quiet conviction. They stared at each other in stalemate.

"Why are you doing this?" Alex asked, because it was clear neither of them was about to back down, and he needed to come at it from a different approach.

Swinton gave him a brief, patronising smirk. "Wouldn't you like to know? Maybe you shouldn't have rushed me through my speech."

He lifted his chin and waited. Experience had taught him that people could never resist giving their reasons.

She glanced down at Wolf's gun again, and perhaps she, like Alex had done many times before, realised that talking was an excellent tactic for delaying anything unpleasant.

"You ruined _my _life. It's only fair for me to return the favour."

He blinked. "Sorry, I don't think we've met before this."  
"Julia Rothman," she said, and watched for the flash of recognition. "She used to live in Wales too, did you know that? We met as teenagers, in the youth detention centre. She's the reason I'm doing this. Because your family took everything: your father stole her heart, and you stole her life."

Alex tried to make sense of that. "You… you were in love with her?"

"You left me with nothing. So I'm going to do the same to you. You can't stop me."

"Right," he said. "You know, you shouldn't let your life revolve around one person. Wolf, keep an eye on her, will you? I'm just going to see if her password is 'Julia'."

He kept his eyes on hers as he spoke, and the flash of panic there was answer enough.

"And you should back up your work!" he added over his shoulder as he headed back to her study.

* * *

Alex watched the pigeons flock to squabble over the fallen crumbs of his ice cream cone, and hastily licked at the side as the sun melted it faster than he could eat. The surface of the Thames rippled and glimmered with blinding flashes as a tour boat passed in front of them, and around him K-Unit's voices merged as they gossiped about their new member.

They made a funny group, four men and a boy, but anyone could see they were happy.

"Are you sure you won't come back?" Eagle begged Fox. "Because Badger is absolutely terrified of Wolf, and it would be funny but it's no good having a member who won't stop stammering on the few occasions we can persuade him to speak up."

Fox smiled and shook his head. "You don't need me. He'll realise that Wolf's more bark than bite soon enough, and in the meantime - well, you managed to deal with Swinton fine on your own.

"Under arrest and soon to go on trial in a closed court," Wolf grinned. "There was a lot more than just her articles on Alex in that computer of hers, once your Smithers got past her encryption."

"Good old Smithers," Alex and Ben chorussed. They glanced at each other and laughed.

"It's weird," Alex said, crunching down on the final mouthful of his cone. "I can't remember any of the people I've gone up against being prosecuted before."

"That's the way it should be," Ben said. "It's not your fault," he added quickly as Alex started to look melancholy, "you just attract the extreme end of trouble."

"I don't, do I?" Alex sighed. "I think I deserve another ice cream for that."

* * *

**A.N. **_**Just a Minute **_**is a hilarious radio show, go check it out.**


End file.
